Thoughts on Authority for May 13, 2017

God is the universal and absolute authority over all that exists. This is because God created everything that exists. Everything, except God, is finite, temporal and created. God is eternal, triune, all powerful, all knowing and everywhere. So God has all power and authority over creation.

For inanimate objects and systems God has created gravity and forces to make the systems run. God has created plants and animals to reproduce themselves in a way that seems automatic without God being involved. Of course God is intimately involved, sort of micro-managing every atom and sub-atomic particle, making it all work. And all this detail is nothing difficult for God.

So God has absolute authority over the things of creation. They behave, in a general sense, how he has decreed. Even when things break, God has decreed it.

When it comes to people, God is also our absolute authority. From the very beginning, God has decreed his desire concerning human behavior. Adam and Eve were told to not eat that fruit, and they did and we have been living with the consequences ever since. Through history God has explained his way of doing things, not so that he may have slaves, but so that he may have communion with his creation.

So what gives God the right to tell us what to do? What gives God the authority? The answer is simply this: since God made us, he owns us and can do anything he wants with us. People might say that just because God made us, we are not his play-thing. After all a child is not the slave of the parent. The difficulty with this logic is that there is no human analogue for what God has done. God made everything out of nothing and anything we do, including making children is under God's system and God's rules. God has no rules. He does what he desires and God owns all he creates: planets, animals, trees and people. So if God owns us, can he not make rules about how we act and speak and believe?

Add to all this the fact that at the end of time, and time will end someday, as God decrees, at the end of time, people that have followed God will be rewarded and those who do not will be damned. What gives God the right to judge people like that? Well, God created you, owns you and has made his requirements clear. Yet people deny God exists, create strange idea about what God wants and then wonder why they are under God's curse.

Finally, God has chosen to interface with humanity using covenants. A covenant is like a contract. God does his part, we do our part and we receive consolation. The current covenant being offered by God, and it is offered to everyone, is called the New Covenant and it is based on the crucified Christ. God killed his Son on a cross for his part and our part is to believe it and accept it. Then consolation is eternal life. If we break or reject this Covenant offer, we will be cast into the lake of fire for all eternity.

#thoughts on authority#